"So they were dismayed and outraged when they learned their new home was on a list of properties to be seized by the city to make way for a proposed biotech park north of the Johns Hopkins medical complex."

Mr. Turner told The Sun that "they're doing the same thing to us they did to the Indians," and though he's been spared the smallpox-blankets and the cavalry charges, his point is well-taken. A sympathetic councilwoman may yet save the Turners and others from the government's wrecking ball, but their property's future is still undecided. Nor is such eminent-domain abuse without local precedent.

I'm not usually given to advocating political violence, but surely there's a case to be made for kidnapping the guilty planners, locking them in a room with the collected works of Jane Jacobs, and not letting them leave until they can pass a pop quiz?